Thompson given until March 5th to prove that he has not "abused the legal system"

Whenever a tragedy occurs, it is virtually a given that Florida attorney Jack Thompson is making a beeline for the nearest media outlet to voice his predictableopinion that video games were the cause of the violent outburst, and has made several attempts to use the legal system to further his cause; however, the Florida Supreme Court appears to be striking back.

02/19/2008 ORDER-SHOW CAUSE
TO: JOHN BRUCE THOMPSON
It appears to the Court that you have abused the legal system by submitting numerous frivolous and inappropriate filings in this Court.

Therefore, it is ordered that you shall show cause on or before March 5, 2008, why this Court should not find that you have abused the legal system process and impose upon you a sanction for abusing the legal system, including, but not limited to directing the Clerk of this Court to reject for filing any future pleadings, petitions, motions, letters, documents, or other filings submitted to this Court by you unless signed by a member of The Florida Bar other than yourself.

The phrase "numerous frivolous and inappropriate filings" stands out to any member of the gaming community familiar with Mr. Thompson's less-than-stellar record in attempting to sway the gaming industry. Mr. Thompson's vitriolic response was both equally amusing and confusing, as he the eggs on the very court that serves him the notice:

This is the single greatest gift that any court has ever given me in my 31 years of practicing law. I shall now, through a new federal lawsuit, deconstruct The Florida Bar ... This court has threatened Thompson. He does not threaten back. He hereby informs this court that he will see it in federal court.

The Florida court is looking forward to this appearance.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

You're still free to cuss. I've seen plenty of high rated posts with cussing. If it's a great post it will get up to 5 (or even 6) on its own. Shaving one point off posts that are historically and statistically weak has a very minimal effect on good posts but saves people who chose to vote, rather than comment, valuable moderation points.

There's been more than a quarter million posts on DT and we're pretty good at making just enough rules to keep things civil while doing our part to let people voice just about any opinion they like. The rating system is a just small part of that.

The entire point system has gotten to the point where it is ridiculous. Originally seemed it was used to get rid topics not worth reading - someone who says something not worth reading or responding to - now if you disagree with someone they are voted down, if you agree they are voted up.

Rating topics should not used as a substitution for arguing. "I win because other people reading this voted you down." The system also is apparently even being abused by people who have multiple accounts just to vote responses up and down.

Account botting, meta-voting and vote targeting will all get you banned, and we've banned dozens of IPs and user accounts for doing this in the past.

You can change your account, you can change your IP, you can change your cookies, you can change your user agent, and we'll still catch and ban you if you try it.

When two people argue back and forth of a topic that is negatively rated, both parties are penalized. Just responding to negatively rated topics is enough to penalize you. "Don't feed the trolls" was a popular mantra on Slashdot.

The great state of Illinois may not have given me the best education the state could buy, but I did spend the better part of a decade in enough stat classes to engineer a fair commenting system that discourages flamewars, off topic discussions and personal attacks based on statistical analysis of user ratings and word frequency matches.

I think far too many care about their "rating". Just say what you believe, try and back it up with facts, and let the points fall where they may.

Not eveyone will agree with your opinion, and some very legitimate replies will get rated down. That's just what's going to happen. Deal with it.

In the end, who cares. Do you need a cookie everytime you get rated up? How can DT "fix" a rating system that is governed by it's users? If you look at the majority of posts, I think the rating system does a decent job.

Your first example is phrased in such a way as to pose an intellectual question requesting an intellectual answer. Your second example is phrased in such a way as to be taken as an aggressive or combative stance, and in fact will often detract from the maturity of the conversation.

Swearing does not in and of itself add seriousness, and more often portrays a negative image of the swearer if it is used commonly.

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